Unicycle hockey...

I went out today to see what I could see... I found a unicycle group that were warming up and playing hockey. I admit to having looked up what was on so I didn't just "find" these guys & girls... I read about a guy who is to ride his unicycle from Perth to Sydney and it piqued my interest. I also see a guy riding a very large wheeled unicycle past my work in the mornings. I must admit to always having wanted to give it a try...

The people at the Melbourne Museum last Sunday meet on the last Sunday of every month to play unicycle hockey it looked very cool and lots of fun for all ages. I heard someone say once that the reason people go to the Grand Prix is to see either the world champion or the crashes. I'm not sure if there were any world champions there that day but I didn't see any real crashes so that inspired my confidence. In the second photo you can see a young boy, he mixed it up with the big guys with no apparent fear.

I may just have to give it a try one day!

Concentrate...

I've just had an AAARRRGGGHHH/GRRRR moment...

I have been up since 5:30 this morning to go and shoot some images for a client. It was a magnificent morning and the sunrise was brilliant...

I shot the images, came home, started processing the images and all was going well.

What the client wants is a collage of images of the buildings that they design and build. I have made up a template of sorts and spend a bit of time processing the images then creating the collage for each building. All of this is fine and I pretty much just get into the zone and go through the process.

I normally work with layers within Photoshop so that if an image needs to be changed I can just delete the layer and replace it rather than doing the whole thing again. The last layer I create is a text layer with a copyright notice.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about that's ok. Just think that the copyright notice is written on a clear layer over the top of the images and it can then be removed when I want to send the image to the lab for printing. Works perfectly........ When you concentrate...

The next step is to create a small version (megabyte wise) by flattening all of the layers and resizing the image for the web. I then send that copy to the client for approval and the original, full size version is ready for printing or fixing as necessary.

The problem arises if you don't concentrate and close the flattened file as is and tell Photoshop to save changes as it closes the file... That's the AAARRRGGGHHH/GRRRR moment right there... As soon as I did it I realised that if I would have to redo two of the collages because once the file is flattened and saved you can't get rid of the copyright notice!

Just so that you know the correct way... Before you save your images as a flattened file go back one step in the history to an unflattened file and save the image as a TIFF or PSD file.

It's a good idea to learn from mistakes. Very wise people learn from the mistakes others make...

Photography, walking, tutorial...

I'm trying to come up with a "snappy" name for the photography tutorial I am planning to run in the next few weeks. I'm open to suggestions...

All About Light is a bit of a mouthful... Someone in the USA has already used Photo Walk Pro... Hmmm? I'll need to keep my thinking cap on for a little longer...

Anyway: This is the news.

I did a course at work last week and one of the tasks we had to perform was to state what we wanted to achieve from the course. I thought long and hard and finally concluded that to tell the truth was the best option (there were senior management people in the course with me). So I declared that what I wanted to achieve from the course was to focus (no pun intended) on being a succesful, creative and sought after professional photographer.

Part of that ambition is to teach people the basic principles of photography and to do it during a walking tour of a photogenic part of Melbourne (or wherever I happen to be)... Maybe a coffee and a chat first followed by a walk around shooting everything in sight with your camera. All the time aiming to master, or at least improve, your understanding of using your camera to capture your creative vision. I've been thinking of doing this for quite some time but the course last week crystalized it all and made me put a date on the first course.

So if you are around Melbourne on the 13th of June and you would like to improve your skills with your camera drop me a line.